Grisham shortens things up
Since bursting on the scene with the runaway hit “A Time to Kill” in 1989, John Grisham has been one of the most reliable fiction writers alive, churning out a bestselling novel almost every year. But like the best pitchers in Grisham’s beloved sport of baseball, sometimes you just want to throw a change-up. Enter “Sparring Partners, a collection of three novellas with almost nothing in common. Yes, they’re all about some aspect of the law — but that’s the only thing that groups them together.
“Homecoming,” set in Grisham’s fictional Clanton, Mississippi, features Jake Brigance, the attorney readers first met in “A Time to Kill.” Jake is the eyes and ears for an old friend who committed a crime and now wants to come back to town to get to know the daughters he left behind at a young age when he fled the country fearing prosecution.
My favorite of the trio was “Strawberry Moon,” which introduces Cody Wallace on the day he is scheduled to be executed. It just gives us a glimpse of Cody’s final hours, as he talks to his prison guard, the warden, a doctor, a priest and a retired teacher. Cody’s back story is teased out in those conversations, just enough to create some sympathy.
The eponymous story comes the closest to a traditional Grisham legal thriller. There’s courtroom intrigue, bribes and family drama galore, all in 123 pages. The plot centers on the Malloy family — two brothers who inherit a once-thriving law firm founded by their father, who is now in prison. They dislike each other intensely and have set up their legal practice so while they split everything equally, they don’t even come to the office on
the same days. There is no love lost for their father, either, so when Dad is on the verge of a pardon, all hell breaks loose. It’s up to a high-ranking woman in the firm, Diantha, to manage the chaos and make a choice: Does she try to help the family heal or look out for herself ?
If you thought Grisham novels were page turners, the three novellas in “Sparring Partners” read even faster than that. — Rob Merrill, Associated Press
Wealthy, dysfunctional families are so common
in novels that it’s easy to dismiss books centered on them. Don’t make that mistake with “The Latecomer,” which introduces readers to the Oppenheimers, a New York family with triplets born via IVF who were “in full flight from one another as far back as their ancestral petri dish.”
The novel’s title contains the key to the story, a fourth child added to the family as the triplets leave home for college. Hers is the distinct narrative voice of the novel, and it’s a pleasure to read. Her sharing of the family history and her role in its reconciliation drive the plot.
The beauty of the novel’s
structure is that the aha moments are revealed slowly, during detailed recountings of each of the family members’ lives. We don’t even learn the name of the title character until about a quarter of the way through the book, and connections are made among characters until the final page. It makes for a very satisfying read.
In addition to grief and guilt, the book tackles other weighty themes as seen through the eyes of the privileged family. Religion factors prominently when one of the triplets, Lewyn, rooms with a Mormon his freshman year at Cornell. Race plays a critical role as well, when the triplet named Harrison meets a Black conservative. That character serves as a reflection point not only for Harrison, but also for the rest of the family as they grapple with identity and cultural appropriation.
If it all sounds very heavy and serious, the reading experience is the opposite. The wry and incisive narrative voice and the hope it conveys for her family — and by extension readers in the real world — make the time and effort well worth it.